impact on voter share in marginals, with Labour seeing an increase of two percentage points and the Liberal Democrats enjoying an increase of five percentage points. 211 One may suggest that these figures are relatively insignificant in a national context, however Denver and Hands write that ‘figures of this size can often make the difference in winning and losing a seat’; 212 although the Conservatives won the 1992 general election, the party lost 40 seats whilst Labour gained 42 seats and recorded a 3.6% swing. Hence, it can be argued that Labour (and to an extent the Liberal Democrats), through its emphasis on ground campaigning reduced the Conservatives’ parliamentary majority and helped the party lay a solid foundation to build upon in the 1997 general election, which it ultimately won by a landslide. Fisher, Cutts and Fieldhouse augment the conclusions made by Denver and Hands in their study of the 2010 British general election. Fisher et al refer to a 2010 British Election Study post- election survey in which 37% of respondents suggested that they made the decision of which party to vote for during the campaign thus this c onveys that, given the rise of the ‘long campaign’ seen in the post-modern campaign era, the ground campaign may be influential in assisting voters. 213 The model put forward in the study backs up this assertion by finding that higher levels of contact with voters at a constituency-level increased the chance of the voter affiliating themselves with a particular party; a predicted 71% of undecided Conservative-leaning voters who were contacted by the party in the ground campaign voted for the Conservatives again in 2010 (and those who were contacted but did not vote Conservative were less likely to vote Labour) as opposed to 52% who were not subject to campaigning. 214
211 Denver & Hands, p. 544 212 Denver & Hands, p.544
213 Fisher, J., Cutts, D., & Fieldhouse, E. (2011). The electoral effectiveness of constituency campaigning in the 2010 British general election: The ‘triumph’ of Labour?. Electoral Studies, 30 , p.816 214 Fisher et al. p,825
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